No Age Restrictions on Job Ads 30 October, 2007

The Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare recently made it illegal to put age restrictions on jobs. I am relieved to learn this, as it always bothered me to see age limits such as “under 35″ on job descriptions in Japan. I can’t prove that there is a direct connection, but it seems like specifying that you want a younger employee means that you can justify keeping the salary low, and that makes it easier to keep salaries low for women in contract positions. Anyway, I think this new law is a good step towards making hiring practices more fair. I’m not sure whether it is still okay to specify whether you want a male or a female employee, as I have also seen a lot of ads like that here. Hopefully that will be outlawed soon too, if it hasn’t already been.